Ten years of three strikes in California

As a piece of robbery by the Golden State's prison goons, represented to perfection by the real Heart of Darkness, the CCPOA, three strikes makes Willie Sutton look like Winona Ryder.

A new report by the Justice Policy Institute gives a breakdown of the numbers (p6): of around 150,000 state prisoners [1], some 7,000 have three-strikes (mandatory life) sentences; around 35,000 have two-strikes (doubled) sentences [2].

The population of strikers has risen ten-fold in ten years (p7); 65% of strikers were doing time for a non-violent offence (p9); the rate of strikers amongst the black population was ten times the rate in the white (p12): 7 per thousand of the CA black population is serving time under a two- or three-strikes sentence!

Where is the white-hot outrage of the sort of nice liberals who haunt Kos and Atrios? I've seen no sign of of any incipient wave of protest. It seems that homo-marriage hits the spot, humanity rotting in the bowels of Mike Jimenez's cash-cow - not so much. (None of those delightful photo-ops, for a start!)

Oh - and the payoff for Mikey and his goons? According to the report (p26), the marginal effect on incarceration costs for existing and released strikers is around $5 billion. No breakdown showing how much of that is CCPOA members' wages already paid out: I would guess the dollar amount is significant.

And how much of those extra wages have been kicked back to politicians?

Some numbers go up to September 2003, others to June 2003 - this is as annoying as hell when one is trying to tie up the numbers quickly - as I suspect most users of the report will be doing!